Yesterday, June 20,2011, Nintendo released “Ocarina of Time” for the Nintendo 3DS.

I had no knowledge of this until after a visit to the local Best Buy store where I had an unplanned interaction with the 3DS.

One of its amazing features was its entire AR (augmented reality) capability. You experience AR when a 2D flat piece of cardboard with an image of Link (the hero of Zelda) was placed on a flat surface. Aiming the external camera lens of the 3DS at the card, you then watched on the screen of the 3DS as a yellow box appeared, the lid opened, and the character Link crawled out of the box. He wielded his sword, and you could then direct him to run and charge around the surface beside the card.

Perhaps you have seen this before? I hadn’t. What is amazing is this is a toy. A game. We talk of incorporating AR into distance education — but I do wonder why.

During my time with the 3DS and the attendant who was enjoying showing the features of the 3DS, several people asked the attendant where the new release of the 3DS version of “Ocarina of Time” was located. Apparently there were 3,000 copies made for release in the US and it looked like ten of them were at this store.

One of the attractions to the 3DS version of the game — afterall it was intially made for the Nintendo 64 and released in 1998 (Wikipedia) — was that you could use this release of the game to order a free version of the Soundtrack. The offer, however, ends tonight at midnight. If you’re interested, head over to Club Nintendo.

How can you resist free GOOD music that probably makes you remember good times playing Zelda?

This year is also the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda — you can read an interview with Kondo from the Sound Group for Mario and Zelda music. With this release of 3DS Ocarina and the soon-to-be released “Skyward Sword” for the Wii, I’d expect a rekindling of interest in playing Zelda music on the ukulele. Afterall, it’s timeless, this music.

I have no idea how to read. Feel like such a noob.I know the strings are reeevsrd, and numbers indicate frets.. but yeah :(I just play this E:3 a: 232 e:3 a:2232 e:3 a:232 repeatBut would really like to learn to play tabs properly.All material I’ve looked at online hasn’t been helpful :(